The White Road

Maybe I should have been surprised that Bowen knew that I was staying in Charleston, but I wasn’t.

“Keeping track of my movements, Bowen? I’m flattered. By the way, it’s not a stage. It’s a truck. Don’t get above yourself. You want to tell the morons who I am, go right ahead. The TV cameras will eat it up. As for why I’m here, I wanted to take a look at you, see if you’re really as dumb as you seem to be.”

“Why am I dumb?”

“Because you’re aligning yourself with Faulkner, and if you were smart you’d see that he’s crazy, even crazier than your friend here.”

Bowen’s eyes flicked toward the other man. “I don’t think Mr. Kittim is crazy,” he said. The words left a sour taste in his mouth. I could see it in the curl of his lips.

I followed his glance. There were flakes of dried skin caught in Kittim’s remaining hair and his face almost throbbed with the pain of his condition. He seemed to be slowly disintegrating. His was a Catch-22 situation: looking and feeling the way he did, he’d have to be crazy not to be crazy.

“The Reverend Faulkner is a man unjustly persecuted,” resumed Bowen. “All I want to see is justice done, and justice will result in his vindication and release.”

“Justice is blind, not stupid, Bowen.”

“Sometimes it’s both.” He stood up. We were almost the same height but he was broader than I was. “The Reverend Faulkner is about to become a figurehead for a new movement, a unifying force. We’re bringing more people into our fold day by day. With people come money and power and influence. This isn’t complex, Mr. Parker. It’s very simple. Faulkner is the means. I am the end. Now, I’d advise you to go and take in some of the sights of South Carolina while you still can. I have a feeling it may be the last chance that you have. Mr. Kittim will escort you back to your car.”

With Kittim at my side, I walked through the crowd. The TV crews had packed up and left. Children had joined the celebrations, ru

At my car I turned to Kittim. He had replaced his sunglasses, obscuring his eyes. An object lay on the ground between us. He pointed his finger at it.

“You dropped something,” said Kittim.

It was a black skullcap, ringed with a red and gold band. Blood had soaked into it. It hadn’t been there when I’d parked.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“I suggest you take it with you. I’m sure you know some old kikes who’d be glad to receive it. It might answer some questions that they have.”

He backed away from me, made a pistol from the finger and thumb of his right hand, then fired it at me as a farewell.

“I’ll be seeing you,” he said.

I picked up the skullcap from the ground and wiped the dirt from it. There was no name inside it, but I knew that it could only have come from one source. I drove as far as the nearest strip mall and made a call to New York.

When the end of the working day came with no contact from Elliot, I decided to go looking for him. I drove out to his house, but the workmen hadn’t seen him since the day before, and as far as they could tell, he hadn’t slept in the house the previous night. I headed back to Charleston and decided to check the tag number of Elliot’s dining companion from earlier in the week. I took out my laptop, and ignoring the E-mail notifications, went straight to the Web. I entered the license plate on three databases, including the huge NCI and CDB Infotek services as well as SubTrace, which flirted with illegality and was more expensive than regular searches but was faster too. I red-flagged the SubTrace request and got a response less than an hour later. Elliot had been arguing with one Adele Foster of 1200 Bees Tree Drive, Charleston. I found Bees Tree on my DeLorme street atlas and headed out.

Number 1200 was an impressive classical revival tabby manse that must have been more than a century old, its facade constructed from a mixture of oyster shell and lime mortar and dominated by a two-tiered entry porch supported by slender white columns. The SUV was parked to the right of the house. I walked slowly up the central staircase, stood in the shade of the porch, and rang the doorbell. The sound of it echoed in the hallway beyond, eventually losing itself in the sound of firm footsteps on the boards before the door opened. I half-expected Hattie McDaniel to be standing before me in a pinafore, but instead it was the woman I had seen arguing with Elliot Norton on my first night in town. Behind her, dark wood extended through the empty white hallway like muddy water through snow.

“Yes?”

And suddenly I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t even sure why I had come here, except that I couldn’t find Elliot and something told me that the argument I had witnessed went beyond any professional issue, that there was more between them than a typical client-lawyer relationship. Also, seeing her up close for the first time, I was confirmed in another suspicion that I had: she was wearing widow’s weeds. All she needed was a hat and a veil and the look would have been complete.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said. “My name is Charlie Parker. I’m a private investigator.”

I was about to reach into my pocket for id but a movement on her face stopped me. Her expression didn’t soften, exactly, but something flashed across it, like a tree moving in the wind that briefly allows moonlight to flash through its branches and illuminate the bare ground beneath.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” she said softly. “You’re the one that he hired.”

“If you mean Elliot Norton, then yes, I’m the one.”

“Did he send you here?” There was no hostility in the question. Instead, I thought there was something almost plaintive in it.

“No, I saw you…talking to him in a restaurant two nights ago.”

Briefly, she smiled. “I’m not sure that ‘talking’ was what we were doing. Did he tell you who I was?”

“To be honest, I didn’t tell him that I’d seen you together, but I made a note of your license plate.”

She pursed her lips. “How very farsighted of you. Is that how you usually behave: making notes on women you’ve never met?”

If she was expecting me to act embarrassed, she was disappointed.

“Sometimes,” I said. “I’m trying to give it up, but the flesh is weak.”

“So why are you here?”

“I was wondering if you might have seen Elliot.”

Instantly, there was worry on her face.

“Not since that night. Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know. Can I come in, Ms. Foster?”

She blinked. “How do you know my name? No, let me guess, the same way you found out where I lived, right? Jesus, nothing’s private anymore.”

I waited, anticipating the closing of the door in my face. Instead, she stepped to one side and gestured for me to enter. I followed her into the hallway and the door closed softly behind me.

There was no furniture in the hall, not even a hat stand. Before me, a staircase swept up to the second floor and the bedrooms. To my right was a dining room, a bare table surrounded by ten chairs at its center. To my left was a living room. I followed her into it. She took a seat at one end of a pale gold couch, and I eased myself into an armchair close by. Somewhere, a clock ticked, but otherwise the house was silent.